


Sometimes

by whitchry9



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Realities, Angst, Character Death, F/M, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Matchmaking Cat, Multiverse, mentions of all sorts of awful things but only briefly, so many what ifs, sort of, what if
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 06:58:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4469648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitchry9/pseuds/whitchry9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No matter how many universes there may be, Matt and Foggy seem to be together in all of them, one way or another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sometimes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt  
> http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/3230.html?thread=6607518#cmt6607518
> 
> Note- All sorts of awful things are mentioned in this fic, including, but not limited to: suicide attempts, rape, gender dysphoria, and child abuse (cough Stick), but none of which are mentioned in detail or for very long.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Matt Murdock in possession of no self preservation must be in want of a Foggy Nelson.

And since every single version of Matt Murdock, no matter which universe it was, lacked a basic self preservation instinct, every one of them needed a Foggy Nelson.

So the universes complied.

 

There is the main universe, of course, the one where everything goes to plan, best outcomes and all that. Matt and Foggy are defense attorneys together. Matt is blind, but fights crime and kicks ass, and Foggy stands by his side, even if he falters for a bit. Wilson Fisk ends up in prison where he belongs, Karen Page is safe as their secretary, and even though Matt can still hear sirens at night, he is able to sleep.

It is one of the best universes.

 

There are other universes, of course. All of them, actually. New universes spawn as decisions are made, the smallest thing creating an entirely different world where anything can happen. Often it's only little changes, like a house painted a different colour, but sometimes when a little boy rescues a man from a truck, his hair isn't red, but blond. Sometimes a father doesn't throw a fight and his son decides he wants to become a doctor instead of a lawyer. There is no telling how a certain decision will turn out, which is why they all turn out. Everything that could have ever happened, has, in one place or another.

Every single thing that could have ever happened to Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson has happened, only not all at once. Separately, in different worlds, different universes, all pressed together and separated by the weight of choices that have been made.

 

* * *

 

In one, the roommate matching system at Columbia does not match Matt and Foggy. Instead, Matt is paired with a man named Daniel, and Foggy is given a single room. Instead they meet in torts class, when Matt asks a question that makes the teacher falter, and Foggy helps him study for civil law, because the teacher is very evil and definitely hates them. They move in together second year, but don't intern at Landman and Zach. Instead they work with a non-profit organization that defends battered women. It's hard work and mentally taxing, but they both love it. Ultimately, they still set off on their own to form Nelson and Murdock.

Matt still becomes Daredevil, but takes to heart every single woman's cry he hears. He nearly kills a man after he beat his wife into a coma in front of their sixth month old.

Father Lantom tells him that he can't save everyone.

Matt still tries.

When they take Karen's case, they know how to ask about her past, about why she came to New York. They find out that she's escaping from an abusive relationship.

They swear to never let that happen to her again and they mean it.

Karen smiles brightly for the first time in months and they can't help but hire her.

Matt still leads with his heart when confronting the Russians, and Claire pulls him out of the dumpster. He still rescues the little boy taken from his father. Karen still pulls on that thread that threatens to untangle all of Fisk's web, and Ben helps her. (He always helps her.)

 

Something so simple leads to so many changes.

 

Matt and Foggy are not always friends though. Sometimes they are acquaintances, rivals, lovers. Sometimes they raise children together. Sometimes they fuck hard and fast and pretend it never happened in the morning. Sometimes they fight in the court room, on the streets. Sometimes Foggy is a prosecutor and sometimes he is a criminal.

 

Once they share a cat, one that sort of wanders between their apartments across the street from each other. They both think it's a stray, but the cat knows that it's playing both of them. When the cat breaks its leg and Foggy takes it to the vet, Matt is surprised when the cat shows up with a cast and he ties a note to it, typed carefully so that it is legible. He and Foggy send notes back and forth using the cat as a messenger for weeks before finally meeting. Foggy is shocked to find out that Matt is blind, and the next note is in beginner braille. Matt is pleased.

Six months later, they move in together. The cat looks smug all the time.

 

Sometimes Foggy is the kingpin taking over the city instead of Wilson Fisk. He is careful about it, quiet. He doesn't need to kill people to get his way. Matt doesn't find out until it's too late, and he can't do anything. In that universe, he ends up moving to San Francisco, but always keeps an ear out for what's happening at home. He can't help but miss it, like there's a place in his chest it's supposed to be.

 

When Matt is nine, there is an accident most of the time. Most of the time he is blinded, but not every time, not every world. In some worlds he dies, slowly, instantly, from every possibility to every impossibility. He still touches Foggy's life though, in ways that neither of them can fathom. But he does.

Some of the time he escapes with his vision intact. Sometimes he is only blinded in one eye. Sometimes he is still blinded, but does not gain the senses that make him almost superhuman. He never meets Stick, never trains to fight for a war he isn't given details about. He goes to university and becomes a normal lawyer. They still have their own business together.

 

Sometimes he suffers from a head injury, has to relearn to walk, speak, write. Sometimes he's paralyzed, to varying degrees. Sometimes he's scarred along with his vision loss. Sometimes his eyes change from brown to blue, empty and obviously unseeing.

 

Sometimes, Matt doesn't rescue the old man. He watches the accident in horror, stuck in place on the sidewalk. Sometimes Matt isn't even at the scene, at a playground blocks from there with a new friend he made. (They hear about the accident and wonder, what if.) They stay friends for years and eventually go to college together, law school together, start a business together. Every year, Matt thinks about the old man who died that day, and still wonders, what if.

 

Sometimes, the accident happens as planned, but Matt's father realizes how much his son needs him, and quits boxing. He works long hours for minimum wage, but it's a safe job. He watches Matt grow from a boy to a young man.

When Matt graduates from law school, he couldn't be prouder. Foggy describes to Matt in hushed tones how their fathers are hugging in the audience as they all throw their caps in the air. Matt beams.

 

Other times, Matt's father still dies, whether because of the boxing match or something else. Sometimes he takes to drinking after... well, after Matt's mother. Sometimes he drowns in a bottle, and he's only thankful Matt can't see it happen.

Sometimes he dies slowly, other times quickly, all at varied ages.

 

Other times, he dies as planned, and Matt goes to the orphanage. Sometimes Stick comes, sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes he's even more of an asshole, but never less. He is never actually good to Matt. Sometimes he stays to train him further, even if Matt does give him the bracelet. A few times, he explains what the war is. Rarely, Matt even fights in it.

 

In one universe, Matt is blinded at the age of nine. He gains his powerful senses, and when his father dies, he goes to the orphanage. Stick arrives to train him, and train him he does, in everything from fighting to lying to how to use his body to get things from people. There is practical training, in which Stick demonstrates how it's done. Matt knows it isn't right, knows that adults aren't supposed to do things like that to kids, but he doesn't know how to refuse. After all, he owes Stick everything.

Years later, when he and Foggy are lying in bed together for the first time, slightly drunk, just enough to make it easy to say it, Matt tells him. Foggy is horrified, because he is a good person. Matt tries to downplay it, explain it wasn't like that, but Foggy assures him it was wrong, his feelings are valid, and that he won't force anything.

When they do have sex for the first time, it is like nothing Matt could have ever imagined. It doesn't erase what was done to him by any means, but it's the start of taking back his own body, and he couldn't imagine anyone better to do it with than his best friend.

 

Sometimes Matt doesn't go back to the orphanage after Stick abandons him. Sometimes he heads to the streets to make it on his own. He's smart and sneaky and it isn't hard to find places to live, buildings where no one is home, houses where the mail has piled up for a few days. His fingers are fast and can slip wallets out of pockets and small items into his own. No one ever suspects him.

Sometimes the streets are tougher than he expects, and he ends up back at the orphanage, which isn't a bad place. But he has been hardened by his time away and can't believe in a God who allows all that suffering.

 

Sometimes, Matt's religion soothes him after his father's death. Sometimes he recites scripture to help himself sleep at night, clutches his rosary close to sooth his senses.

 

Other times, he hates God for all that He's done. Matt rejects everything that has to do with religion, loathes the nuns and the orphanage he's trapped in for everything they represent, and tries to pull his belief from his skin with nothing but his fingernails. Matt finds it too hard to reconcile faith with all that he has lost, with all the suffering that affects not only him, but everyone, everywhere. He cannot believe in such a heartless God.

He shuns faith, and it doesn't make what he eventually does any easier, but it does leave him without anyone to talk to.

 

Occasionally, Matt is consumed by guilt over what he does to the girl's father. He thought that it would right everything, that he would be able to sleep at night, but that wasn't it. He only feels more and more guilty and it eats him up, and instead of going to church and confessing, he:

  * Slits his wrists, down the street, not across. Foggy is the one who finds him. He is only minutes too late, and the blood is still warm.

  * Stands on the roof of his building, thinking about whether or not to jump. Foggy is the one in the street who calls up to him.

  * Hangs himself in his apartment, but is discovered by a neighbour, still alive. Foggy is the paramedic who arrives on scene and saves his life.




 

Far too often, it is tragedy that brings the two of them together. Their lives seem inextricably linked to sorrow. Foggy's discovery of Matt's identity follows on the heels of Elena's death, or sometimes, even Matt's. (Sometimes Foggy arrives later, when Matt has already collapsed on his floor. Matt isn't awake to refuse a hospital, nor to call Claire, and he dies in intensive care a day later, leaving Foggy with more questions than answers and a bloody costume that he removed before the medics arrived. He eventually finds the burner phone and calls Claire, who tended to Matt when he arrived in the ER. She's lovely to him, but refuses to explain anything for months. Foggy wears her down in the end. They form a relationship cemented by loss, but grief is not a good foundation to build upon, and they eventually drift apart.)

 

Sometimes, Matt is not born Matt. Sometimes Jack and Mary have a daughter instead. Sometimes she is happy as a Maddie, and sometimes he knows that it isn't meant to be. In a few universes, he tells his father early and he is understanding. He begins transitioning before the loss of his sight, before his father's death. In some, he doesn't transition until college, and he's still recovering from top surgery when he meets Foggy. In all of them, Foggy is accepting. In some, he is fantastic about it. In a few, he completely understands, and it's not til later that Matt feels the scars across his chest and realizes, yes, Foggy really does get it.

 

Sometimes, Maddie uses her gender to hide her identity, taking advantage of her small chest and low voice to made everyone think the Devil of Hell's is a man. Between that and her blindness, no one will ever suspect her. It makes her happy, but also a little bit sad that none of the criminals know that they're being beaten by a woman.

 

In one universe, Matt's mother comes back when she receives the call from Jack. She's there for Matt as he mourns the loss of his father. It's hard for both of them, to readjust to each other without the familiarity of Jack to break the ice, but Mary is kind to Matt and helps him adjust. In that world, Stick does not train Matt, but he learns to control his senses with his mother and through calming exercises. In it, Matt uses the money his father left him to pay for his college tuition, and his mother works to earn enough to put him through law school.

Of course, she loves Foggy. Everyone does.

 

Matt does not always become a lawyer by any means. His careers span from teaching to professional sports. His vision loss only limits his career choices in some aspects, and in one world, he goes on to win gold in the paralympics, swimming for all he's worth. (In some worlds, when he's not blind, he becomes a pilot, Foggy Nelson in the seat beside him, thinking up words games to keep him distracted on long flights. In others, they go to space together or discover what's really at the bottom of the ocean.)

Matt is often drawn to careers with law or justice, because that's who he is at his very core. Sometimes the urge to put things right is overcome by the urge to explore, to reach further than anyone has gone before, but it's always there, underneath, thrumming below every decision he makes.

 

Sometimes, Matt's childhood and the suffering he had makes him realize it doesn't have to be like that for others. He becomes a social worker, and fosters about half of the kids whose cases he has. He knows what it's like to feel unwanted, to be passed over in favour of someone younger, happier, more adoptable. He ends up with a gaggle of misfits, half of them with some form of special needs, and he makes sure they grow up well. It's hard work, but it's more rewarding than he could have ever imagined. Some of them only pass in and out of his life briefly, and others stay until they move out on their own, but Matt makes sure to let them know they are always welcome back, whether to visit or stay.

 

Sometimes, not as often as things should be, Matt and Foggy fall in love. Not the kind of love that they normally have, which is fine and good and fulfilling, but _love_ love. The kind where they hold hands and go on dates and buy flowers for each other to apologize. Sometimes it can't be, for one reason or another, and those worlds are some of the most heartbreaking. In others, everything works out, and Nelson & Murdock becomes Nelson&Mudock, partners in law and love. Sometimes they fall in love at Columbia, and start dating before they pass the bar. Sometimes it takes longer, and it's not until Foggy finds Matt bleeding out on his floor that he realizes he loves the idiot. Sometimes there are rings and wedding bells, but other times not, because they don't need a legal document to tell them their feelings. (Marriage does come in handy sometimes, because it means they can't testify against each other, if it ever came to that, and they will always be allowed at each other's bedside.)

Sometimes their love involves sex and sometimes it doesn't. Neither way is better than the other; one doesn't negate the love that they have. In a few, their relationships are open or include more than two, and it is just normal for it to be. Sometimes Matt and Foggy adopt children, other times it is animals, ranging from dogs to hamsters to cats to hedgehogs. Sometimes they just grow old together on their own, and it is perfect.

(Sometimes Matt doesn't grow old, his lifestyle catching up with him, dead of a bullet or a blade or a particularly bad fall.)

 

More often than not, Matt still takes up his place as the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. It is home, after all, and no matter what else happens, he wants to protect it.

(Sometimes Foggy recognizes that his friend and his city are so intertwined it was impossible to hurt one without the other suffering as well. He removes Matt as carefully as he can, some parts left behind and bleeding, and moves Matt somewhere quieter, safer. Sometimes they practice law in New Mexico, California, hell, even a different country. Matt can't help but feel like he left some part of himself behind, even if he knows it was for the best. “You're killing yourself by staying,” Foggy told him, many times in many worlds, talking him into going. All the Foggys always knew what to say.)

 

Sometimes, vigilante justice is not enough for the city of Hell's Kitchen. Sometimes, just protecting the people is not enough. Sometimes, Matt doesn't go to law school, instead moves back home and takes up his place in the shadows. He kills those who slip between the cracks of the justice system, gotten off on technicalities or released on good behaviour. He doesn't allow any more pain to be caused at their hands. In those, sometimes Foggy is the cop who is conflicted about stopping him, sometimes the lawyer who ends up defending him when he eventually gets caught, sometimes one of the ones rescued by Matt's hands, whether directly or indirectly.

Sometimes, he's the one who finds Matt's body after he finally bit off more than he could chew, and although he did not know the man, only knew of what he had done, he couldn't help but sit in the street and cry for him.

 

Rarely, Matt and Foggy never cross paths. Rarely, one of them dies early in life, moves across the country, becomes a hermit, and they never meet. In these worlds, the sun seems to be reluctant to shine. The winds blow a bit colder.

The world is unhappy when it can't make things work out like they're supposed to. And it tries its best to bring the two back together, whether that means raising one from the dead, or quite literally propelling one halfway across the world by means of a hurricane. There is always the pull between the two, magnets that only figure it out when they are within a certain distance, and then never want to let go.

 

* * *

 

No matter what happens to Matt, no matter what time in his life, the universe always strives to give him a Foggy Nelson. All Matt Murdocks need a Foggy Nelson. It is as simple a fact as gravity existing, as birds flying, as the sun rising each day without fail. And the universes try their very best, pushing and pulling the two men together.

 

Sometimes, the various Matts and Foggys wonder how exactly everything happened to bring them together, if it was luck, fate, or something else. The universes are only slightly concerned that they will figure it out. The men tend to not dwell on the fact that it could have not been, and focus on that fact of what is.

 

There is one universe that just seems... right, for lack of a better word. In it, Matt was blinded at the age of nine, lost his father at the age of ten, and is trained by Stick before he reaches his teens. He knows how to control his senses and channel his anger, the devil inside, as his grandmother used to say. He studies law and has a great roommate, and they plan to become the best damn avocados the city has ever seen. Hell, why not the world? In it, Matt hears a little girl's cries and dons a pair of leggings tied around his head as a mask. He wets his fists with blood and sleeps for the best time in weeks.

In it, Matt becomes the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, the man the city needs, and as Claire said, the man the city made. In it, Wilson Fisk attempts and fails to take over, because the three of them manage to stop him, a rag tag group of friends that threatened to split apart when Foggy discovered Matt in a pile of his own blood one night. But in it, Foggy comes to terms with Matt's identity, and although it can never be the same, they do adjust. In it, Elena dies and Ben dies and countless others die, but Matt and Foggy are together and they are as safe as houses.

 

They somehow always wind up together, in the universes that are designated as good. And that one is the best.


End file.
